


Lineal Burdens

by BirdOat



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Comfort/Angst, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Holding Hands, Late Night Conversations, Lotor respects her and women and thats why he was exiled, Post Season 5, both are light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 18:53:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13887033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BirdOat/pseuds/BirdOat
Summary: In which it's another sleepless night and one becomes two, finding small comforts in the shadow of their parent's wreckage.(prompt fill: "what time is it?", could be read platonic.)





	Lineal Burdens

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for errors.

“Can’t sleep, princess?”

She jumped against the dark, against the curl of his words. Hair fell across scared shoulders, and he would ask where they were from if not for the admission of observing. 

“What time is it?”

Lotor moved to her side as she looks away to the deep, empty black. Only the faint metronome of the castle, thrumbing systems and blinking blues, fills the space between heartbeats. He had been here before-after the stark tiles deepened in artificial night. Always alone, always separate. 

“Late enough.” His voice is quite and faint, dancing on unfamiliar. 

Allura tilts her chin, at him or unnamed stars he isn’t sure. 

“I find myself coming here more often as of late, it’s a good place to think.” 

“Anxieties?”

“Perhaps,” Allura laughs, a quiet huff against crossed arms, “I’m beginning to believe it's turning into masochism.” 

“Princess?”

She's silent, and Lotor thinks he understands. The aftertaste of saying too much, too soon and its bitter, bile regret. 

“Sometimes, when I look to the stars all I can see is how vast our universe is,” Allura pulled within herself, fabric rustling against skin, “and with that how small I am- _Voltron_ is.” 

“Billions have risen to fight, just from you daring to utter the notion of resistance; do you not see this?”

She shakes her head, waving away platitudes against a jagged reality. Lotor is unsure of what to offer, besides the ramshackle empathy of a man never shown any. 

“I believe I’m more afraid of not seeing the end, is all.” 

Brow cinched, Lotor presses the quintessence lurking beneath her skin to the back of his mind. “You think you’ll die before then, princess?”

“Oh,” Her mouth curves kindly against the cool light, and he swears the strength of her shoulders give an inch,”I’m afraid my mortality is hardly of immediate concern, prince Lotor,” facing him fully, his steal composure threatens to rust, “It’s...I know _I_ can keep fighting, but-”

Nerti is alive and dead in the time it takes him to blink. Brief and keen, “I understand.”

“Besides, humans have short lives, don't they?”

A burn grows in the cage of his ribes when he looks to her, and sees no beauty in the ache of their burdens. The bridge born between, however, was a retched, understanding thing, “You won’t ask-” he begins, choking on splintered reverence,“-because you know they’ll stay.”

"..."

Lotor looks from viewports brimming in empty space that reeked its cold hunger, to see her and only her. Unsure, the prince halts. It would be easier to do Allura the disservice of pity if only she’d seem finite. Small. Huddled in on herself in the dusk-light hall while confiding in her enemy’s son. But Allura burned and burned and burned against apathetic stars; and Lotor can’t fathom how. Not as the cruel void clawed at the flimsy glass of her necronomicon ship, while her fingers dug into still thawing arms. 

She sighed, and the prince wonders if her father’s ghost crept into the cryochamber with her 10,000 years ago. 

“We’ll never run out of battles to fight, will we?”

Allura stands next to him, luminescent and echoing with hollow spaces of flimsy adulation-with things unsaid and unacknowledged. A single laugh fetters forth, and he isn’t strong enough to pull away. 

“Well, your people will certainly never run out of medals for you either, princess.” 

When she smiles with the full of her face, and lines sprout on the corner of her eyes, he thinks it a secret, proud victory. 

She yawns, and he swells; afraid, hopeful, and terribly mortal.

Lotor holds out a hand, and ignores the static in his blood, “May I, princess?”

“It would be an honor, my prince,” She flourishes, bowing impossibly deep into a curtsy, an impish grin proud on her face.  
Taking her hand in his, he laughs, and for a moment, loses himself against the rough of her palms. Unyielding, calloused, and burnt- a fighter's hands, a ruler’s hands. They could break him, and Lotor memorizes the paths while torn between leading to her room.

For the first time, chewing a lip between her teeth, fear overwhelms the sincerity of her voice.

“Do you think we’re doomed to replicate our fathers?”

She turns to him, a last time, and the prince lets his fingers drag against hers. Lotor does not tell her this was a thought that haunted him before. 

“Princess, I hope not.” 

She looked to him with questions behind spiraling eyes, irises holding a fire that promises war against their ancestry. The prince counts the pauses between her next breath.

“Goodnight, Lotor.”

“Goodnight, princess Allura.”

**Author's Note:**

> anything else < allura
> 
> comments and kudos are appreciated, thank you <3


End file.
